Posts by vysethelegend47

This happened to me too. I first went to the festival and did the 3 available bonus levels, then went and listened to Golden Yoshi's story. Then I took the boat to the last dungeon and found I could enter it. I kept expecting to get turned back at some point, but to my surprise, I got the pre-end game cutscene and then fought the boss of the game and got the credits. I beat the game with only 3 exits.

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Current Project: Puzzleshmup             Links: Twitter | YouTube | Mario Maker

My glitch seems to be a bit different from squallhighwind's. He said his shard counter didn't go up. I just got my first shard and my counter did increase. I also didn't get a cutscene that then opened the path to the tower like he did... I just went to the boat behind Frankly's Cottage and found I could access it.

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Current Project: Puzzleshmup             Links: Twitter | YouTube | Mario Maker

Early this year I released the first demo of Super Mario World: The Star Field. I didn't start a thread about it and did nothing to advertise it, yet it's been recieved very well and has, to my surprise, for a long time remained one of the highest rated non-featured hacks on the site. I'm sure that's partially just luck.

My goal with this project is to make a full-length hack with vanilla levels design. There are some non-vanilla elements, but I call it vanilla level design as the levels could be in a vanilla hack. There are custom sprites, but the custom sprites, such as NPC's, are used to tell the story, not to change level design. I wanted to give each level it's own feel and make them play differently. I am using the SMW Redrawn graphics. I know lots of people say they are overused, but I like them, and as I'm not adding lots of exgfx, this gives the game more of a vanilla feel. I am trying to use lots of custom palettes, however. I find most people who use these graphics don't tweak the palettes.

Demo two will be released soon. The first demo contained the first two worlds, plus one difficult world seven level. The next demo contains worlds 1 through 4, however, I decided to remove the world 7 level from this demo, as I felt many of the world 4 levels were hard enough that I didn't need to include a world 7 level to have one difficult level.

Partially I decided to start a thread this time because I have some concerns with how the hack is turning out. The levels are getting quite difficult, and if I keep making more worlds that get harder and harder, it may become too frustrating. Right now I like the difficulty, and I'll be leaving it mostly as is for this demo, though players who don't like challenging hacks won't like it. There are two things I'm considering doing about the difficulty for the final version. I could either add a health patch, specifically the SMB 2 health patch (cause I could then hide heart containers in certain levels and I already have plans for were some of them would be) so Mario could take more hits so it would be easier, or I could do two versions of the hack - a hard version, and a normal version where I tone down the difficulty. I'll welcome opinions on this once I release the demo.

And now, I'll show off some of my levels.

This is the castle of world 3:

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A secret world 3 level:

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A world 4 level:

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And another world 4 level:

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If anyone wants to beta test, I'll be ready for beta testers in a day or so. I'll probably only use 2 or 3 beta testers.

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Current Project: Puzzleshmup             Links: Twitter | YouTube | Mario Maker

I'm having a bizarre problem that has me totally stumped. I'm trying to use the SNES RBG values from the palette to make certain choices with my sprite, like how the NPC V 3 sprite uses the palette to determine which level to display a message from. I'm trying to get the RBG value based on my sprites initial X position the exact same way as in the NPC 3 sprite. Though when I take the code the gets this value from that sprite, it doesn't work in my sprite. Here's the part that should get the first byte of the RBG value I want in A:

LDA #!MessagePalette ; \
CLC ; | Figure out which palette to use for level
ADC !X_Position,x ; /
STA $2121 ;
LDA $213B ; \ palette to read data
LDA $213B

Where !MessagePalette = $E0 ;read from palette E
and !X_Position = $1504

I have no idea why it needs to LDA $213B twice. But some experimenting showed that if I took one of those lines out in the NPC sprite it wouldn't work properly.

In my sprites init routine I took the following from the npc sprite's init routine to setup X_Position:

LDA $E4,x ; \ Grab X position
LSR A ; |
LSR A ; |
LSR A ; |
LSR A ; |
STA !X_Position,x

I've been experimenting with this a lot. The part of the code I don't understand is the last 3 lines:

STA $2121 ;
LDA $213B ; \ palette to read data
LDA $213B

Looking those up in the RAM map tells me those are part of a large chunk of bytes that are GFX 32 decompressed. I'm writing the palette number I want to read from to $2121 for some reason. I've determined through experimenting that I am writing the correct number there. I'm writing the same value that the NPC sprite code writes there. The problem is when I LDA $213B twice, I always have the value 00, regardless of what the RBG value is for the palette I'm trying to read from. Somehow this code works in the NPC sprite but not in mine. I'm running this code at the start of the main routine just before the tilemap routines are called. I discovered that if I run this code in that spot on the NPC sprite I get the same result: 00. Does anyone know how the palette RBG values work and how you can read them? Help would be greatly appreciated.

EDIT: Problem solved. It was really really weird. Apparantly, only for certain initial sprite x positions, it won't read the proper value only the first time if it is executed during the first call to that sprite's main routine. No idea why. I was reading it every call to main to see if the sprite had been collected or not (if it's collected, erase the sprite). I fixed it by checking to see if this was the first call to main and not doing anything if it was.

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Current Project: Puzzleshmup             Links: Twitter | YouTube | Mario Maker

I'm loving this hack! I just found the secret exit:

Ha I've been lost in here soo long I've racked up 99 love and over 700000 sin. Getting 30 and 100000 is easy XP

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Current Project: Puzzleshmup             Links: Twitter | YouTube | Mario Maker

I finally found all the switches! Now I don't know where to go. I think I've been in every room in the map. And I'm not asking for help! I'm gonna go explore some more.

Whoamme got every ending!? Awww... I was hoping I could get one of them first.

Edit: I beat it. I got the best? one ending. I had 99 love and 99 laughter XP Also that boss was wicked hard. But fun at the same time.

I have a suggestion. About how you implemented the restart-room-when-you-die asm. You obviously know it's exploitable. Instead of finding a secret exit, you can figure out what screen it's on, bring an enemy to that screen somehow, and kill yourself to get to the next room. I did this once in the room that mention's Lizzy's garden. I was thinking if you changed it so that rather than activating the current screen exit when you died it activated a preset screen exit. You'd have to have a specfic screen, say screen 1F, and have that screen's exit reserved in every level to be activated when you die. This way the only way to advance to the next room would be to get in the pipe.

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Current Project: Puzzleshmup             Links: Twitter | YouTube | Mario Maker

Super Mario: The Core is the hack I've been working on since December. I took a break for about two months as I was busy with a school project, but now that school's done I'll have more time to put into this. And for anyone who played the demo of my other hack, SMW: The Star Field, that's frozen for now. I'll probably never finish it. Unless all the ASM required for this hack kills me and I give up.

Anyway, about this hack. First of all, there will be no overworld. The hack spans one giant level with save blocks. Hitting a save block allows you to save your game, and when you restart, you'll appear next to the last save block you hit. There are no lives. Die once and you go back to your last save. Not just the location of your last save - the game reloads all the save data from your last save. Now for some screens:



This is one of the first areas in the game. As you can see, I'm using Redrawn GFX for sprites, the player, and some other objects. Asides from that, I'm drawing the forgrounds and backgrounds. My GFX style is pretty simplistic... I know this background is kinda plane. It was my first background. I was thinking of adding something in front of the mountains but I'm not sure what to add.



Here we have the save block GFX.



And a star coin. Star coins are collectables. There will also be a collectable called the Signal Ring (a la Super Mario RPG). Once you have it, it plays a sound effect whenever you enter an area that has any star coins you haven't collected. And what do star coins do? You'll have to wait to find out...



The inside and outside of Mario's house. This was the first complicated GFX set I drew (well it's complicated for me). I'm using the old Lunar Magic as 1.71 uses some of the RAM addresses my ASM hacks use, and I don't feel like going through them and changing all those addresses.

And finally, here's a video of the first area. It has a demonstration of the signal ring.

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A few more things. The story will be important in this hack. There will also be side quests and collectable power ups and such that give you new abilities and allow you to access new areas. The game will be divided into 8 chapters. That's all for now.

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Current Project: Puzzleshmup             Links: Twitter | YouTube | Mario Maker

Yeah I was thinking of cut-off when I made the square corners. I also want different degrees of rounding on corners for different tile sets and decided to try squares for that one. I kinda like the square corners, but if more people think I should round them I will. Here's some comparison screen shots:


No rounding.


Slight rounding.


Significant rounding.

If you pick the third one I'll also have to change the corners on these ledges:



I like those ledges the way they are, so I'm leaning towards the first 2.

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Current Project: Puzzleshmup             Links: Twitter | YouTube | Mario Maker

I'm now using the rounded corners for that tile set now. And I think you guys are right; it does look better that way. Now that I actually drew it rounded the square ones don't look as good anymore. And I'm keeping the other ledges the way they were.

Yes I've seen the thread on Final Destination. I came up with the save block independantly though. I'll admit SMW2+3: The Essence Star was my inspiration for this hack. It got me thinking about what I could do with ASM. Also I was inspired by Super Paper Mario.

It's nice to know people enjoyed SMW: The Star Field.

Thanks for the comments everyone.

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Current Project: Puzzleshmup             Links: Twitter | YouTube | Mario Maker

Yes the item box is for store bought goods + prizes. Also I can't move the coins because they are using the points counter, which has it's location hard coded. I'm using the 6 digit coin counter patch, so technically you could get 999999 coins. I'm planning to have one secret cost a ridiculous amount of coins. Maybe 100000. And I'll have it so you can pay for it in smaller installments. Also to help get that much, one of the power-up collectables I'm planning is something that gives you two coins for every coin collected. I haven't implemented that yet, but it shouldn't be too hard. I'd just have to modify something in the 6 digit coin counter patch.

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Current Project: Puzzleshmup             Links: Twitter | YouTube | Mario Maker

It's been quite while since I updated. Sorry about that. I got distracted by FFXIII unexpectedly as my friend let me borrow his PS3 to play it. It was kind of a bad time for me to announce this hack, but anyway, here's a video of the intro, and your first peak at the game's plot:

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I'm not giving much away about the plot right now. It'll be about much more than Mario going on an adventure to slay a magical beast.
As you can see in the video, I took PsychoKamek's suggestion and changed the Luigi graphics. That was something I was planning on doing but probably still wouldn't have bothered to do yet if no one pointed it out.


Though you can't see it in the video, that is also done now.


I'll be putting shops in towns and in a few hidden areas. The only way to get to the overworld menu is a save block. Or by dieing.


First secret in the game! Now that you know to look for it I'm sure you'll find it easily.

That's all for now. Updates may be slow in the future. Sometimes I'll be quicker than this but sometimes I may take this long or longer updating. But that doesn't mean I'm not working on it.

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Current Project: Puzzleshmup             Links: Twitter | YouTube | Mario Maker

The sleeping Mario is a sprite. I don't know how the Submarine Pop works so I'm not sure if it's similar. My sprite is actually quite simple. It's a 32x32 sprite that displays the sleeping Mario graphics. When Mario touches it (which is as soon as he enters the level) it makes him invisible, and keeps his x and y speeds at 0. When you jump, the sprite dies, and sets a flag that prevents it from ever respawning. This flag gets saved to SRAM once you save your game, along with a bunch of other "special event" flags I'm using. For instance, another "special event" flag is set after you touch the mail box, which changes Luigi's message when you talk to him again, and prevents the mail box from warping you a second time, and changes what sailor toad says when you talk to him (haven't done the sailor toad part yet). I've hacked the saving and loading routines to get it saving all this extra data, and I also got it to erase the extra data properly when you erase a file.


I won't be needing beta testers for a long, long time. The soonest I expect I could be ready for a demo (assuming I decide to release a demo) is a year from now. But thank you for your interest though.

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Current Project: Puzzleshmup             Links: Twitter | YouTube | Mario Maker

I seem to be falling into a pattern of updating every 2 weeks. I might continue this. I have a few things to show right now. First some screen shots:


Some screen of sailor Toad. Yup, his name is Tren T.


Here we have some town GFX I've been working on. The mushroom denotes shops, and the moon is for inns.

Yup, inns. Basically you pay money and get your health recovered. I have a video to demonstrate. It sounds simple, so why the video? Well, the inns aren't that simple. Also the video shows off the signal ring. I made that months ago and mentioned it before but no one commented on it, so I decided to make a video of it that demonstrates what it can do.

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Also, I've been getting some requests for various things in my hack. I figure now is a good time to make known my policies on releasing resources. I believe the hacking community should embrace sharing resources. Though I also understand people wanting their hack to be the first with something, and I'm kinda like that too. I'll release just about any of my GFX if anyone wants it, so you can always ask. Sprites and blocks I may give you if you ask. It depends on the sprite and the block. When I'm done this hack I plan on releasing most of the things I made for this hack. Though I don't seem myself finishing this for so long that I see no point in holding onto everything until I finish it. So basically the bottom line is: ask. I might say yes, I might say no. Also, someone asked me for my Mario's house GFX. Now I'm wondering, would people be interested in having me release those GFX to the site? If there's enough interest for it I'll do that.


I really have no idea. I'm slow. I don't have nearly as much time as I want to put into this. (Warning: This paragraph just describes how busy I am and it has nothing to do with the hack so don't read it if you don't care) I work 40 hours a week doing programming (it's an awesome job =D) and then sometimes after that I don't feel like programming any ASM. And I don't hack on weekends because I go home on weekends (week days I'm in rez) and my computer in rez has all my hack stuff on it. This allows me to do other stuff on weekends. And on weekends I work on my NSMB Wii hack. Also there's a game my friend and I want to make using C# and XNA that'll take up even more time. It's basically a cross between Puyo Puyo and Touhou.

Ok more hack stuff. I don't really have an estimate for how long it will take. Well, all my estimates are way too long so I don't want to give one XP I think maybe I could have a demo for Christmas if I release one at an earlier stage in the game than I was originally planning.

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Current Project: Puzzleshmup             Links: Twitter | YouTube | Mario Maker

Alright I'll be releasing my Mario's house GFX to the site. I can't do it till Sunday night though. That's when I'm back in rez where my computer with all my hack stuff is.


Oh. Right that was silly of me. Um... I really don't have a good estimate. For now I'll say probably between 2 and 4 hours. I'm aiming for good replay value and hidden goodies, so hopefully it could take a lot longer than that.


Oh I definitely plan on changing the overworld to some sort of menu thing. I'm not sure what though. And I'll probably keep the save block warping you to the overworld, because I want to have several options available from there that you can access whenever you save. Well at least one option. What it is is a secret. It'll require some really tough ASM that I expect to be more difficult that anything I've pulled off yet, so we'll see if I can manage it.

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Current Project: Puzzleshmup             Links: Twitter | YouTube | Mario Maker

It's update time! No screen shots this time. We're going straight to a video:

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If I were to divide this game into levels, this would be 1-3. The spiked goombas and spiked paragoombas are custom sprites I coded. The spiked goomba is actually my first custom sprite that moves around and has a graphics routine that I coded rather than borrowing a simple graphics routine from another sprite. I've determined that I really dislike coding graphics routines. The paragoomba graphics routine was especially annoying trying to get the wings right. I made the spiked paragoomba imitate the regular bouncing goomba as nearly as I could figure, but it's not identical.

Also we have red coins. Touch a red ring and 8 red coins will appear. If you collect all of them within the time limit, a star coin will appear where the red ring was. The red ring will never respawn after you get the star coin.

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Current Project: Puzzleshmup             Links: Twitter | YouTube | Mario Maker

Looks good so far. I notice you are using my house gfx. That's an interesting use for the bricks. I originally drew them to be a chimney. A minor issue is the top and right sides of the bricks don't have outlines. I drew a tile that is blank with an outline down the left side which you can use to give the right side of the bricks an outline. There is no tile for giving the top of the bricks outlines though. I don't think it looks good the way the background scrolls in the house.

Also Tam and Min... have you perchance read Wheel of Time? Those are both characters from Wheel of Time.

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Current Project: Puzzleshmup             Links: Twitter | YouTube | Mario Maker

Awesome a Wheel of Time based hack. I love Wheel of Time. And Min as the Dragon Reborn? That's different... I think it would be very difficult to adapt the plot into a SMW hack setting. It'd be great if you could have different playable characters and that way follow several of the character's plot lines. I'm interested in seeing how this turns out.

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Current Project: Puzzleshmup             Links: Twitter | YouTube | Mario Maker

I decided to try draw some npc character gfx for some of the main characters in this hack. I'm showing 3 characters who will come up in the story a lot, along with a brief description of each one:

Fayette

A young faerie girl who accompanies Mario on his quest. (She's sort of like Navi or Starlow)

Annelle

A mysterious woman who appears occasionally when Mario is in trouble to help him out. Not much is known about her.

Duar T.

A Toad Mage Accendai (Accendai are basically wizards) who seeks to prevent Mario from fulfilling his quest.

If anyone has suggestions on how to improve these npc gfx I might try it.

And now, a video of the game's first boss (also my first custom boss):

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It's fairly simple and easy as far as custom bosses go, but it's the first boss so I figure it should be.



I'm planning on having an NPC in the previous town explain red rings and tell you the coin appears where the ring was.

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Current Project: Puzzleshmup             Links: Twitter | YouTube | Mario Maker

I kind of agree that the music is too epic for that fight. My plan for boss music was to have a different song for each chapter boss, and some bosses that you fight several times like Duar T. would get their own music, and then the Cave Story boss music would be the generic boss music for all other bosses. I still want to use the Cave Story boss music as the generic boss music... maybe I'll have two generic boss songs to create a different feel for different bosses.


No the boss isn't an Ultimate Noob Boss - I coded it from scratch. Though some of it's behaviours are similar to those of the Ultimate Noob Boss, it does a number of things the Ultimate Noob Boss can't do. Such as scrolling the screen to a certain position and keeping it there for the duration of the boss fight. Also it jumps at random intervals to one of two randomly selected heights. About Fayette, I think a glow effect could be cool but I also don't think I could make it look good. I will be coding a seperate gfx routine for her so she hovers up and down a bit and her wings animate faster than the normal npc animation speed.

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Current Project: Puzzleshmup             Links: Twitter | YouTube | Mario Maker